


that healing place

by blackeyedblonde



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (mixed book & TV vibes), Angel Healing, Book Omens, Caretaking, Comfort Sex, Crying, Established Relationship, Fanon, Gentleness, He/Him Pronouns For Aziraphale (Good Omens), He/Him Pronouns For Crowley (Good Omens), Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Injury Recovery, Intimacy, M/M, Non-Graphic Smut, Pre-Apocalypse, Sentient Bentley (Good Omens), Tenderness, Whump, mild body horror, so much whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 21:08:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29907108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackeyedblonde/pseuds/blackeyedblonde
Summary: “Oh, dearest, don’t you ever worry about me and my sentimentalities,” Aziraphale says softly, leaning in as if to thumb away the tear track, though he seems to freeze when he finally notices the hairline fissure on Crowley’s sunglasses.“Crowley,” he says at length, gone dangerously serious and quiet, and in the same moment Crowley can feel his last finger clinging to the edge of the glamour, sensing the open abyss with its gaping maw waiting below him. “What did theydo?”“Nothing,” he lies through his teeth, trembling with the effort to stay upright, to even utter the next three words that rattle in his throat. “Nothing at all.”
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 112





	that healing place

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all, just my usual disclaimer to let you know that if there are any weird inaccuracies or continuity errors in this, I read the book 15 years ago and have only seen (1) episode of the series thus far, lol. I know, my overarching TV-aversion makes sense to nobody including myself, but I’m nonetheless here with another story to share. I love whump! And caretaking. And deliciously tender comfort sex. Aziraphale and Crowley essentially help it write itself, and my blissful adoption of fanon is the forgiving plaster that [hopefully] fills in most cracks.
> 
> This is theoretically meant to take place pre-apocalypse, but it’s obvious Crowley and Aziraphale have been intimately “close” for quite some time prior, even if they don’t yet live together. The sex is very non-graphic, and it’s lightly implied Crowley is making the effort with a vulva and Aziraphale has a penis, but you don’t necessarily have to read it that way if you don’t wish to.
> 
> CW: very brief suicide implication, implied ambiguous events leading to physical trauma, some implied but not yet addressed emotional trauma, some blood, mild body horror, pain, caretaking, angelic healing, the most gentle and vanilla sex known to man, excessive metaphors, and a heaping plate of hurt/comfort

  
  


It is, as far as punishment wrought at the hands of eternal damnation’s minions goes, not that bad.  
  
In other words: Crowley is having an exceedingly hard time breathing or connecting two coherent thoughts together, much less mustering up the strength to actually maneuver his broken and beaten corporeal form back into the Bentley, and then drive to his flat beyond that point. It’s not that bad, but he is acutely aware that any lesser entity would have already died.

His world is in itself a world of pain; nothing more, nothing less. It would’ve been preferable to discorporate himself in order to simply stop _feeling,_ though that act would’ve landed him right back in the laps of the dukes and demons who had done all this to start with, and he isn’t too keen on hitting that particular outcome on the great big bloody Wheel of Fortune anytime soon for the next century or several, thank you kindly.  
  
It’s far easier to lay flat on his back, on the cool, grassy grounds of the churchyard cemetery, and simply let time pass him by for a spell. And so he does—for what must be hours, or perhaps even days, until the foggy morning the groundskeeper and his boy eventually happen upon him and his car in the far northeastern corner of the graveyard, and make quite a ruckus with waving their spades and hoes all about until the elder man actually walks up on where Crowley is laying and then, quite abruptly, goes very quiet.  
  
“Oh, shite,” the groundskeeper wheezes, already breathing hard from his premature tirade. “Oh fucking shite on a bloody fucking stick, Jacky, he’s as dead as a doornail.”  
  
“He ain’t fully dead, he’s still got some color to ‘im, don’t he?” the younger man presumably named Jacky says a few seconds later, voice lowering to something conspiratorial. “You think he’s come out here to end it all and bodged his own suici—”

“Don’t say it!—don’t even be thinking it, boy,” the groundskeeper hisses. “We’re standing on hallowed grounds, in case you’ve forgotten. You want the devil himself to rise up out of the earth and snatch your arse for blasphemy?” 

“Too late, already come and gone,” a pained voice groans, and the old groundskeeper, for all his age and aching arthritis, nearly jumps a foot clean off the ground. 

“God in Heaven!” he chokes out, scrambling back as Crowley lets out a stifled sound and slowly turns over onto his side with some effort. “How are you still breathing, son? You look like you’ve been put through the bloody thresher. W—we ought to phone you up an ambulance, or summat like that.” 

“No need, trust me,” Crowley says, looking for his sunglasses and finding them a metre or so away from where he lay, cracked on one side. He army-crawls—or slithers, rather—over to where they are with what seems to be only one functioning elbow, slips them on despite the fractured lens, and then grins up at Jacky and the old man. “A thresher, huh? Pretty fucking close, actually.” 

Crowley coughs, then, and spits up a little bit of dark blood onto the grass and the corner of a gravestone set into the ground. He grimaces and moves to apologetically wipe it away with one rumpled sleeve, only to smear spittle and blood even worse across the polished marble. 

“Sorry about the _messss_ _,”_ he says through his teeth. “I’ll have to leave a donation for the diocese on my way out.” 

“Maybe you shouldn’t be moving much,” Jacky says, coming over to lean down in Crowley’s general vicinity but very decidedly not touching him. “We learned that back in school—if somebody’s been in an accident, you keep ‘em stable until EMS arrives so they don’t go cocking up anything else internally, y’know? Your bones might be broken...or, uhm, something.” 

How Crowley’s bones might’ve become broken—or _something_ —suddenly doesn’t make much sense, considering his pristinely parked antique car and the fully intact nature of all the gravestones surrounding them. Both the groundskeeper and Jacky stare at him a moment longer, and then both take two generous steps back, though they aren’t entirely sure why. 

“You know you’re trespassing on church property, laddie?” the groundskeeper asks, working his lower denture in his mouth like he’s trying to puzzle something out. “We could call the authorities on this.” 

“Whatever, I’ll be gone before they get here,” Crowley says, eyes rolling behind his sunglasses as he grinds his teeth with the effort of sitting up. _Why did it always have to be the bloody cops?_ “If you’d, _fuck_ , just let me—get my bearings, I’ll be on my merry way.” 

Crowley very intently thinks about snapping his fingers and turning them both into a pair of gophers, but in the end only has the faintest glimmer of Suggestion left in him to spare, which makes the humans remember there’s something very urgent to attend to in the groundskeeper’s shed on the other side of the churchyard. 

“Oh damn, I’ve gone and left the spigot running,” the groundskeeper murmurs, scratching his balding head with the sudden awareness as if it’d come upon him like an embarrassing afterthought. “Come on then, Jacky, look alive. You and I are the only two living things keeping this place from going to the dogs.” 

Jacky’s face, gone suspiciously blank, gazes after Crowley where he’s still sitting on the ground in what appears to be a soggy, half-dried puddle of his own blood. The red-haired man in broken sunglasses smiles at him, the expression like an open gash on his ashen face, and waves the remaining arm that isn’t crudely disjointed and hanging at the elbow.

When Jacky still doesn’t move to follow the old man, Crowley reaches up and pulls his sunglasses down his battered nose somewhat ineffectually, but still with enough flair to give the human a pointed, amber-eyed look, pupils narrowed down to a razor’s edge.

“Right, yeah, the spigot,” Jacky says, too quickly, and then does an about-face on the spot and all but marches across the cemetery toward the groundskeeping shed, lolling like a puppy at the heels of his elder.

Once they’re both gone and finally some distance away, Crowley lets out a choked sound between a laugh and a sob, the startling hoarseness of it winging up from deep within his chest like a dying bird. When he brings a hand up to his mouth to try and quell it, he cringes when he sees that his fingers have come away blotted with red.

He scoots backwards on the damp ground, the indignity of it all flaring through him like hellfire itself, until he can lean against the Bentley. Every movement is like a new implosion of pain igniting inside him, and he knows it’ll be like this for a long time; longer than any other injury he’s sustained on earth, at least. Not that he ever often does.

Reaching his good arm up behind him, he wrenches the car door open and, with several false starts, eventually hauls himself into the driver’s seat where he can do nothing but sprawl across the immaculate leather, breathing hard and ragged, sunglasses fallen into the footboard with a resounding clatter _._

The Bentley sits beneath him, silent and tense but otherwise unharmed. 

“Take us home, darling,” Crowley mumbles, mostly into the buttery upholstery. “Sorry to put you out like this, but y’know I’d never ask otherwise.”

The Bentley roars to life beneath him, as perfect and powerful as the day she rolled off the manufacturing line. Crowley’s hands don’t touch the wheel, nor does he even lift his head to peer out the windscreen as the car carefully winds itself around the sun-bleached and weathered tombstones, rumbling almost comfortingly beneath his right ear as it noses onto the dirt road and strikes out toward London.  
  
For a while Crowley simply listens to the engine work, letting it lull him away from the haze of pain and toward a blacker, deeper place where darkness without affiliation wraps itself around in him in a loose, all-encompassing shroud. 

* * * * *

There is a bell tolling in the distance. 

Church bells have always set him on edge, but the fact that this one is ringing _inside_ Crowley’s fucking skull is a new phenomenon altogether. He squeezes his eyes shut, willing the fathomless void to draw him back in once more, but the void seems to have other plans. The tolling continues, the same resounding note again and again, somehow familiar but still too foreign to place. 

Nearly five whole minutes of agony later, Crowley realizes his car phone has been ringing the entire time. 

“Lo,” he says into the receiver, holding it haphazardly somewhere between his cheek and collarbone. “Whosis?” 

“I _said_ —for the third time, dear, _really_ —is that you double parked down there in the street, or is there some other demon driving an antiquarian automobile around Soho this morning?” 

“Not me,” Crowley mumbles, nothing on his body moving except for his mouth. “I’m at home.” 

As soon as the words move past his lips, he suddenly isn’t certain of the verity of them; this is a rather odd sensation, given the fact that his entire nature is built upon a foundation of believing that everything he says is technically true by mere suggestion, even when in direct antithesis to truth on a fundamental level. Crowley knows he’s in the Bentley, which is as adjacent to home as he could generally get, but where the Bentley is currently parked remains another mystery altogether. 

“For Heaven’s sake,” Aziraphale sighs, tutting in his ear. “I’m coming down to fetch you myself, I suppose. It appears I need to invest in a valet service.” 

Crowley’s blood runs even colder than it does on a normal day. “Don’t,” he croaks, hoping, praying to _someone_ , that he’s not currently sitting outside A.Z. Fell & Co. in Soho. And then, more imploringly, “I—I’m at home, angel. Don’t bother with it.”

“Don’t be silly,” Aziraphale chides in turn, rustling something in the background that sounds suspiciously like a biscuit wrapper. “I’ve only just put the kettle on; I’ll pop down in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.” 

The receiver clicks in the earpiece, and Crowley decides, quite assuredly, that he will not panic.  
  
(He panics.)

Crowley knows he doesn’t have the strength left to heal himself within the next fifteen seconds, much less the next fifteen days; there will be no mending of splintered bones, no regrowth of scourged flesh, nothing to be done about the burns and lacerations or the smell of burnt feathers. He was perfectly willing to crawl into bed in his flat for the next fortnight or so and sleep away the pain, but now that option has been tossed out the window. 

His car’s betrayal will be a cross he bears on a different day, he supposes. 

“You and I,” he hisses into the empty cab, laboriously yanking himself up into a seated position at length so his bad arm dangles precariously, “are going to have a little chat about all this, when I’m sorted.” 

The Bentley doesn’t reply, save for the light sound of hot metal ticking near the hood. She’d driven a long way to get here, and managed it in one piece; maybe, Crowley surmises in the back of his head, he ought to be more grateful. 

But then he only has around seven seconds left until Aziraphale is opening the front door of the shop and ambling over to greet him, and he does the only thing he can think of, like a petulant child kicking dirt and toys under the rug instead of tidying like a good boy: he covers it all up, with a feeble snap of his fingers, feeling the glamour drip over him like a clammy, runny egg cracked open on the top of his head.

It’s not sound, he knows it won’t hold forever—but for now, it’ll have to be enough.

Crowley looks down at the shape of his right arm, seemingly twisted back into its proper configuration to his own eyes despite the horrifying pain radiating up into his humerus with each beat of his farce of a heart, and wonders if it’s enough to fool the angel. He retrieves his sunglasses from the floor and settles them into place just as the passenger door swings wide and a familiar face peers down at him, smiling broad and beautiful, a golden light set against the dreary English sky. 

“Have you been drinking spirits already this morning?” Aziraphale asks, eyes narrowing a bit. “You seem a bit peaky.” 

“Something like that,” Crowley says, turning his head with some effort. “Might’ve gotten too close to a procession of Catholics.” 

“Again?” Aziraphale says with a sigh. “You should really know better than that by now, what with them slinging holy water around like it’s party confetti. Well, come along, then—we’ll get you settled in with a cuppa and some of those chocolate biscuits you like, that should do the trick.” 

The slow walk into the bookshop and into Aziraphale’s rear sitting room takes every ounce of energy, demonic or otherwise, in Crowley’s unholy body. He tries to implement his usual swagger but it comes across as more of a staggering trudge sideways, much like a drunken crab, with his bad arm tucked firmly against his aching ribs and one of his feet trying to drag across the pavement in his Italian leather ankle boot.

If God were ever shining Her light upon him again, it would be in this moment, considering She gave Crowley the blessing of having the angel lead the way inside, chattering about books and biscuits and not looking back to see his oldest friend and enemy wretchedly following behind. 

When he sinks into the settee in the back room, he more or less collapses onto it like a dying martyr. Crowley never liked the martyrs much, showy in all their piety as they were, except for Joan of Arc. He’s thinking very intently about her last few moments lashed to the burning stake as Aziraphale bustles back over with a hideous brown afghan and drapes it around his shoulders, then goes to fluff the cushion behind him for good measure.

As soon as a steaming cup of English breakfast and a tray of sweet confections are set down on the low table in front of Crowley, the shop bell jingles out front and Aziraphale’s expression darkens some at the edges, though his voice doesn’t betray him as he calls out, “I’ll be right with you, just a moment!” 

“Chin up, dear, pip pip,” Aziraphale says encouragingly, nodding toward the spread. “Help yourself, of course—I’ll be back in a jiffy.” 

Alone again, Crowley glares at the chocolate biscuits with damp eyes and reaches one shaking arm out to grip the fine porcelain teacup, patterned around the edges with golden flowers. It shakes in his grasp as he brings it up to his lips, not bothering with any cream or sugar before he tips the scalding liquid back like a shot. It hurts, but only as an afterthought of pain set against everything else, like a dandelion weed popped up in a forest of ancient redwood trees.

He wants to eat a biscuit, simply because it would please Aziraphale if he did, and for no other reason at all. But he doesn’t know if he’ll ever eat anything again, so he simply takes one from the edge of the plate and grinds it into crumbs in his good fist, then turns and dumps the powdered biscuit into a potted fern sitting on the antique sofa table behind him. 

“Lick it up while you can,” he says, sounding more weary than warning. “I’m not always so generous, y'know.” 

The fern shivers a bit, but doesn’t otherwise move to shrink away. Crowley frowns and wonders if he’s losing his touch. 

“Well then, where were we?” Aziraphale asks as he bustles back in, turning a frilly dusting cloth between his hands. “Unfortunately our would-be customer was looking for ritualistic occult erotica, the likes of which I couldn’t possibly bear to part with, just between you and I. Fascinating stuff, really, when you look at it from an objective point of view.” 

“I know, I was probably there for some of it,” Crowley murmurs, sniffing and sinking further into the folds of the afghan. The longer he tries to hold onto the glamour, the more raw exhaustion seems to pluck on his marionette strings. If only he could manage to slip out, unseen, and get back to the damned _car—_

“You know, I was a bit concerned when I hadn’t heard from you for a few days,” Aziraphale admits, delicately dropping two sugar cubes into his tea with a pair of silver tongs. “You said there were important business affairs to handle with, er, Your People, and I suppose I got to worrying, even if I know you think it’s silly of me.” 

“S’not,” Crowley says, barely moving his mouth. “I’d prolly be fretting about if you got called upstairs for some big bloody review board meeting.”

Aziraphale seems surprised by this, looking up with curious eyes. “Surely not in the same capacity, though, considering the circumstances?” he asks. “Even if I do know you are somewhat predisposed to fretting—in your own way, of course.” 

The casual, earnest way he has of saying that makes Crowley’s skin want to shrivel up and crawl away. “Isn’t that what people _do_ when they care about each other?” he growls, not wanting to say it but saying it anyway, feeling the words rip like a used plaster from inside his throat. 

He doesn’t want to feel seen, he tells himself. He doesn’t _need_ any reminder that there’s only one other creature in all of creation worth a great big damn to him—only one, tucked away right here in this dusty bookshop in Soho.

The settee dips as Aziraphale sits down beside him, not yet touching him, but close enough for Crowley to feel the benevolent warmth radiating off his body. If he had his way, Crowley would fall into that familiar grace, that smell of old paper and well-loved linen and good lemon soap, and never again come up for air.

“Yes,” the angel says belatedly, pushing a fingertip around the rim of his teacup. “But then again, we aren’t regular _people_ , now are we?” 

Crowley has known this truth since he first slithered down out of the apple tree and touched the warm, living earth of Eden. “What are you even getting at?” he rasps, his fingers slipping on the glamour more with each passing second. 

“I don’t rightly know,” Aziraphale says, shaking his head as he brings his cup up to his mouth, then changes his mind and sets it back down on the saucer again. “Just—the stakes are different, for you and I, I suppose. That’s all. When you go off to handle affairs with Down Below, I sometimes get the notion in my head that you may not come back.” 

He looks over at Crowley, then, and the radiant love on his face is right there, brimming and plain upon the surface of everything in the room, but especially the dimples of the angel’s smile, and the fine, delicate lines that crinkle at the corners of his eyes. Aziraphale is the simplest, purest beauty in all of the world; the oldest, and the single most enduring, only rivaled in Crowley’s mind by the light of distant stars he once cupped between two palms. 

Crowley looks back at the angel and can’t speak. He hurts, so much, and yet his chest swells with a different kind of ache, blooming outward in some benevolent fire he shouldn’t be able to know or name. 

A single tear slips beneath the lower rim of the cracked lens on his sunglasses, falling down over the ridge of his cheekbone. It drops into his empty teacup with a sound like a fine diamond hitting porcelain, then sizzles in the bottom until it’s evaporated and gone.

“Oh, dearest, don’t you ever worry about me and my sentimentalities,” Aziraphale says softly, leaning in as if to thumb away the tear track, though he seems to freeze when he finally notices the hairline fissure on Crowley’s sunglasses.

“Crowley,” he says at length, gone dangerously serious and quiet, and in the same moment Crowley can feel his last finger clinging to the edge of the glamour, sensing the open abyss with its gaping maw waiting below him. “What did they _do?_ ”

“Nothing,” he lies through his teeth, trembling with the effort to stay upright, to even utter the next three words that rattle in his throat. “Nothing at all.” 

Aziraphale lays a hand upon his cheek, then, and Crowley feels himself drop into freefall. He thinks it might go on forever, if only his angel wasn’t there to catch him.

*~*~ *

There is, some intangible stretch of time later, the sensation of softness, warmth, and a veil of comforting reassurance he’ll never truly deserve. Crowley still feels pain, everywhere, but it’s more bearable this time because he’s being held. 

Aziraphale is there, because of course he is. There is no velvet waistcoat, no tweed trousers, no rimless spectacles—but there is the heavy weight of a thousand depthless eyes upon him, intense but softened somehow by the haze of something far gentler than holy wrath. Crowley still trembles, and convulses as another shadow of hurt moves across his naked form, stripped down to something he’s not entirely aware of. If there’s anything left of him in this place, it may be his raw essence. A dark smear of soot upon Aziraphale’s all-encompassing light. 

The soft feathers surrounding him shift and seem to tighten their hold, as if sensing Crowley’s partially lucid thoughts. Wings so big they can cradle him close like a newborn infant, and all Crowley wishes is to stay here forever, if he can. How foolish he was to ever favor the pull of pure, peaceful darkness when he could have had this, instead. 

“Aziraphale,” he thinks he says, though his voice doesn’t sound the same because there’s no air for it to touch upon. “Where are we?” 

**_We’re healing, dear,_** he feels more than hears, like the words come from somewhere inside him, bubbling up from an eternal wellspring, open and flowing like some divine stigmata. **_I’ll stay here with you for a while longer._**

Crowley tries to nod but the gesture doesn’t carry any meaning here. He simply closes his eyes, grounded by the dull ache of distant pain, seeming to lessen more the longer he floats. He would be otherwise unmoored with it, but Aziraphale is a constant tether, whispering ancient words in a thousand voices neither of them have heard or spoken in millennia. 

Time leaves them. Crowley doesn’t miss it. 

*~*~ *  
  


When he next rouses enough to open his eyes again, Crowley is lying in bed, wearing nothing but some thin shift that lays like cotton gauze against his tender skin. There are hunter-green sheets lovingly tucked around him, and the all-too-familiar sprawl of a hideous tartan duvet beyond that. 

“Oh, fuck,” he hisses, catching the glow of embers in the small brick fireplace in the corner despite the shadowed darkness of the room. “I’m alive.” 

“Most assuredly,” Aziraphale says from beside him, licking his thumb and turning the page of a book. It seems he’s been reading in the dark, but then decides to reach over and twist on the bedside lamp now that Crowley is awake again. “Just the way I like you.” 

The angel is settled on top of the duvet, not fully dressed but wearing a pair of blue silk pyjamas and knitted woollen socks. Just looking at him makes Crowley sink further back into the pillows and sheets he’s settled against, sore but impossibly content in the hedonistic softness of this bed.

Tempted by his own curiosity, he tries to move his right arm beneath the covers, breathlessly relieved when the reconnected elbow joint moves like it’s supposed to, though not without some radiating discomfort that makes him clench his jaw and groan. 

“Not too fast, dear boy,” Aziraphale chides, peering down at Crowley over the tops of his spectacles. “We’ve made good progress, but I’m still not finished with you yet. This isn’t a ‘one and done, tap it and run’ process, as the youths would say.” 

Crowley moans and slumps even deeper into the bedding, hair fanned out behind his head on the pillow in a splash of scarlet on English ivy, now clean and free of blood and grime. “Don’t ever say that again,” he murmurs. “Please.” 

“Whyever not?” Aziraphale says with a little snort, though he produces a bookmark from the ether and closes it inside his book when Crowley doesn’t clarify. “Are you feeling peckish at all? It’s been quite some time since you’ve eaten, though I know you don’t make it much of a habit. I could do with a spot of tea, myself.” 

“M’fine,” Crowley says, feeling Aziraphale’s blue eyes sweep over his face, clearly doing some quiet fretting that’s only barely contained beneath the veneer of stark concern on his face. And then, relenting, “Tea. Tea is fine.” 

“I’ll brew up something a little more substantial than that, I think, but nothing too heavy,” Aziraphale says in a pleased tone before swinging his legs over the side of the bed and shuffling his feet into slippers Crowley can’t see. “Are you warm enough? I had to dress you in something light so it wouldn’t impede any part of the healing process.” 

“Just peachy,” Crowley croaks, closing his eyes again as his throat bobs in place. “Never been better.”

Aziraphale lets out a quiet sigh, and Crowley listens to the whisper of his slippers on the floorboards until one creaks directly by his side of the bed, and then he feels warm fingers arrange some of his hair before the angel leans over and presses a kiss against his temple. 

“Insufferable as always,” Aziraphale says, pulling back with a gentle smile on his face. “I think that bodes well enough. I’ll be back in just a few moments.”

The room seems dimmer with the angel gone, even though the warm light of the bedside lamp casts over everything with pale gold. Crowley weakly pushes some of the bedding down, enough that he can draw the gauzy shift up over his belly and chest to get a look at the tender, newly-pink skin healing where open gouges and burns once were. He presses his fingertips into the mending wounds, hissing a little in pain. His body feels like one pulsing ache, from the tips of his toes to his temples, and the weight of the blankets on him is unbearable and soothing at the same time. He draws them back up with his good arm anyway, silently cursing himself for needing the spare comfort without Aziraphale in the room.

Crowley looks to his right at the quaint bedside table and finds that his repaired sunglasses are there, along with some little potted salve that smells vaguely herbaceous. The clock readout on the old analog thing ticking away there tells him it’s a quarter past seven, but he’s not sure whether that’s morning or evening.

When Aziraphale returns a little while later, he carries a tray laden down with all the accoutrements for tea along with something steaming in a stout bowl that throws off the faint aroma of chicken and celery. Instead of setting the tray down on the side table, he simply slides it into bed between them and gives it a stern look that says, _don’t you_ **_dare_ ** _ruin these Victorian bed linens._

“You’re not going to spoon-feed me, are you?” Crowley asks in abject horror, watching as the angel picks up the bowl and spoon before giving the soup a little blow. 

“That’s _exactly_ what I was planning to do!” Aziraphale says brightly, testing some on the tip of his tongue before giving a satisfactory nod. “You’re in no position to use that poor arm of yours, and I really think it might be easier this way, dear, really. It’s no imposition on me at all.” 

“I think I’d rather starve, if I could manage,” Crowley groans, but otherwise opens his mouth just enough for the soup to slip between his lips when Aziraphale wordlessly encourages him to take a spoonful. The warm broth feels good going all the way down, like it’s warming him up from the inside out, but saying that out loud feels like it would be privy to his utter downfall.

“Not so bad, hm?” Aziraphale asks, after Crowley’s taken a few more mouthfuls and then waved him off. “Humans really know their way around the simplicity of bare-bones comfort food, I daresay.”

Crowley waits until the angel’s set the soup aside and taken up his own tea and biscotti before he manages to ask the question that’s been dancing on the tip of his tongue since he first opened his eyes. “How,” he starts to say, and then blearily looks at Aziraphale with his eyes burning something awful. “How long...was I out of sorts?” 

“Nearly a week, not counting today,” Aziraphale answers, somewhat gravely. “I kept you with me that whole time. Do you remember anything about it?” 

“Not much,” Crowley answers, which is regrettably true. “Enough to know that I—I felt you there, bigger than you usually are. Enough to know you were fixing…” He pauses, making a weak gesture with his hand. “All this.”

“And to think we’re not even done, after all that,” Aziraphale says, sounding vexed, but not at Crowley’s expense. “Those heathens really did a number on you this go-around. If I had my way, Crowley, I’d march down there myself and give them a real talking-to about workplace violence, of all horrid things.”

“With or without your flaming sword?” Crowley croaks. 

Aziraphale fixes him with a long, thoughtful look, and suddenly everything in the room feels sharpened, electric and dangerous, like even the feather down pillows they’re lying against could be a weapon of mass destruction. 

“Either or,” the angel says simply, and then the feeling of lightning crackling in the air gradually passes them by. “They wouldn’t be walking away when I got finished with them, though.”

“That’s a tall order for a lone principality up against dukes and denizens of hell,” Crowley says, not unkindly. His mouth twitches on one side like it may be trying to smile. “You making a promise? Hypothetically, ‘course.”

“My dear boy,” Aziraphale assures him, “it is a _guarantee._ ”

* * * * *

For two days, Crowley shifts in and out of lucid consciousness with the ephemeral pull of something not too unlike the moving tides. Sometimes he stays awake for hours, sometimes only mere moments before he slips back under. Aziraphale is always a constant, though, ready at the helm with a book to read aloud or something cool or warm to drink, whatever Crowley may need. 

Sometime in the late afternoon of the third day, when Crowley wakes up feeling like he’s been scrubbed raw by divinity once again, he kicks the blankets off himself and struggles to sit up, but eventually manages to swing his legs around so his toes brush the worn wooden floor. 

“I need an actual shower with regular sodding city water,” he says, panting only a little. “If you miracle me clean one more time I’m going to come out of my skin. I don’t—we don’t even get _dirty_ , angel.”

“Well, pardon me for wanting to ensure your healing wounds stay fresh,” Aziraphale tuts, sounding the slightest bit affronted but nonetheless scrambling up to march around to the opposite side of the bed. He’s not in pyjamas any longer, but one of his waistcoats and a soft linen shirt with the sleeves tidily cuffed just above his elbows. “Don’t stand too quickly now, Crowley—easy does it, steady as she goes.” 

“For Satan’s sake, I can bloody walk,” Crowley grumbles, and then, upon standing, wobbles on his feet for five long seconds and promptly tips forward into Aziraphale’s waiting arms. 

“What did I say about going too fast?” the angel gently chides, though his grip around Crowley’s waist and shoulders is of the utmost tenderness in all its unyielding strength. “Come along, now—I’ll have to run you a nice bath. I think it should do you some good.”

In the old Victorian bathroom, with its high ceilings and white porcelain chamber pot, Crowley’s mind wanders to distant memories as Aziraphale bustles about and starts filling the clawfoot tub. Strolls in the park without the buzz of traffic an omnipresent force in the background, feeding the ducks, watching Aziraphale pull any number of magic tricks out of his high-topped beaver hat. That should’ve been a lewd euphemism, in Crowley’s opinion, but unfortunately was anything but; he was quite sure that damned tophat was still boxed up and stored away somewhere in this bookshop, a priceless antiquity in itself. 

He manages to pull the gauzy shift up to his waist and then can’t seem to move much further, sitting there on a dressing stool by the vanity with it bunched up in his hands. Nakedness has never been much of an issue between the two of them, though the especially sore sight of his own corporeal form may not be something Crowley’s prepared to deal with in full just yet. A great gilded-edge mirror leans against the wall, angled in such a way that Crowley can catch sight of himself from the corner of his eye if he turns his head just so.

Aziraphale hovers at his elbow, momentarily uncertain, and then goes down on one knee. “Do you want me to leave you to it, or shall I help you out of this thing?” 

The angel could snap his fingers and send the nightgown into oblivion or beyond, but the physical process of being undressed seems a little less jarring, metaphorically speaking. Crowley doesn’t speak, simply raises his arms a bit and bows his head to help ease the way, letting Aziraphale gently draw the gauzy material up over his back and then over each arm until he’s sitting there, naked as a lark, shivering and thin and probably the world’s most heinous sight. 

Aziraphale reaches over to twist off the tap, but then turns back to Crowley and presses a finger under his chin. “None of that,” he says sagely, rising back to his feet and drawing the demon up with him. “I can hear you thinking even through that stubbornly thick skull of yours.” 

“I wasn’t,” Crowley says, which is maybe half a lie. 

“Then good thing I’m heading it off at the pass,” Aziraphale says, holding Crowley steady while he steps into the tub one foot at a time. “Do you need anything, dear?” 

“No, m’fine,” Crowley says. It’s perhaps the word he’s said most often since the Bentley showed up outside the bookshop the week before, and also perhaps the most untrue of the bunch: _fine_. He swallows thickly, sinking down into the steaming water with a grateful hiss, and then squeezes his eyes shut tightly before he can speak again. 

“Stay,” Crowley murmurs, fingers wrapping around Aziraphale’s bare wrist before he can pull away. “Read, knit, quote me effing scripture, I don’t have a preference.” 

Aziraphale smiles, abruptly producing a plush blue towel in his hands that he drapes over the side of the bath. “How about to simply keep you company?” he asks. “If you’re amenable.”

“That works, too,” Crowley says, barely above a whisper. He sinks even lower into the bath as Aziraphale gathers up a book and another afghan, this time folded into quarters so he can sit on the floor. He leans against the wall and draws his knees up, balancing his reading material there before glancing over at Crowley. 

“Don’t mind me,” Aziraphale murmurs, looking down at the pages in front of him. “Take all the time you need and more.” 

Crowley doesn’t make too much of an effort to genuinely bathe himself, though he does take a clean bar of lemony soap and lathers it up on a flannel to run it over his arms, chest, legs, anything he can reach without too much discomfort. The real magic is the water’s balmy heat sinking into his muscles and bones, and the steam that seems to never stop rising off the bath helping clear some of the foggy fatigue from his senses. 

Aziraphale quietly reads for at least half an hour, unbothered and at total ease. When he rises and makes to walk over, Crowley wonders if he’s overstayed his welcome, but the angel simply presses two gentle fingers at his hairline and sweeps them back over the demon’s scalp, running through the auburn curls that have become damp at the nape of Crowley’s neck.

“Would you like me to help you with this?” he asks, so simple, entirely innocuous, and yet Crowley’s throat tightens, unbidden, and aches as he slowly nods. 

“You should run a day spa,” he tries to joke, voice sounding unusually small in the high-ceiling bathroom.

“Only for you,” Aziraphale says, and produces a ceramic pitcher and stool to perch upon there at the head of the clawfoot tub. He makes quick but steady work of sudsing up some lavender-scented shampoo in his hands, and then sinks his fingers into the roots of Crowley’s hair and begins to work. 

It is, in a word, heavenly. 

Crowley tries to stifle the moan that rises up in him, he truly does, but it’s no real use in the end. His head drops back into Aziraphale’s hands, totally pliant and given over to the angel’s careful ministrations. The feeling of blunt, finely-manicured nails against his scalp is good enough to make tears prickle in a silent threat, and when Aziraphale tips his chin back and holds a hand against Crowley’s forehead to keep any rinse from falling into his eyes, he’s glad to have the momentary reprieve of feeling hidden, even if the rest of his body is on full display. 

He looks down at it while Aziraphale is running something that smells like sandalwood and vanilla through his hair, combing it through with careful fingers. It’s his body, the vessel he’s walked around in for nearly six millennia, familiar and all too recognizable no matter what shape or configuration it happens to take. The burns and scars are an unsightly addition, and something he doesn’t want to think too deeply on, but beneath them the song remains the same: distinctly Crowley.

His assailants in hell could’ve stripped him out of this body and thrown his very essence onto the rack, but they’d strategically chosen otherwise. Perhaps it was a barb at him for going too native; perhaps it was some cruel way of sending a message about what they thought of his work on the topside. Crowley doesn’t rightly know, but in this moment he manages to find some ounce of gratefulness in the fact that they didn’t completely rob him of the body he’d always inhabited around Aziraphale. 

Something-something about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. Maybe there was some cruel merit in that, after all. 

There’s the sound of somebody’s breath hitching, sharp and painful, and then a ragged sob echoing in the old bathroom. The water Aziraphale was slowly pouring over auburn hair comes to an abrupt stop, and they both seem to comprehend in the same breadth of a moment that Crowley is the one who is crying.

The realization makes it even worse, and Crowley sits up with his hair plastered to his neck, keeling over to bury his face in the towel draped on the side of the tub. He curls his fingers into it and shakes with each new sob, stifling the worst of it until a muffled wail runs through him like a sharpened sword.

Aziraphale’s stricken face doesn’t stop him from getting up and coming over to kneel by the side of the bath. He doesn’t touch Crowley, not yet, simply braces his hands on either side of him and waits until he can firmly decide what to do, worrying his bottom lip with glassy eyes all the while. 

“Oh, darling,” Aziraphale whispers, shaking his head as a tear slips free. “You didn’t deserve this. You could never deserve what they’ve done to you.” 

Crowley shudders and cries, too wrecked to speak, and when it’s clear he’s curling in on himself Aziraphale is there to reel him back in, all soft hands and soothing words pressed near his temple as he wraps the demon up in a towel and carefully draws him from the bath. 

They sit there on the bathroom floor, curled into each other, Aziraphale idly rocking back and forth from time to time with Crowley in his arms and making idle shushing sounds not meant to be anything but a comfort. It’s unsightly, and raw, and terrible enough to be beautiful in a way, but whatever it is, it eventually passes beyond them, burned out into Crowley’s slow, gentle breathing and a halo that shines behind Aziraphale’s head in the shape of the setting sun coming in through the windowpane. 

“M’sorry about all that,” Crowley croaks, eventually, when he’s found an echo of his voice again. “Sometimes things...are. A lot.” 

“I won’t hear a word of apology about it,” Aziraphale says, voice pressed somewhere close to Crowley’s left ear. “You’re safe now, here with me—in every capacity imaginable. But you already knew that.”

“Maybe,” Crowley says around a painful hiccup, and then bows his head against Aziraphale’s shoulder. “Yeah, angel,” he concedes. “Yeah.”

The sun is nearly gone behind them, steadily slipping beneath the rim of the distant horizon behind Soho’s skyline. Aziraphale dries Crowley’s damp hair with a gentle wave of his hand, then presses a kiss into the hinge between his neck and shoulder. 

“Tell me what you need, love, and I’ll go to the ends of this earth to accommodate you,” he says in that peculiar way of his that Crowley adores so much. “Though, I have one humble request; we should get off the bathroom floor sooner than later, or my corporation’s knees may never forgive me.” 

“Yeah, alright,” Crowley says, sniffling around a tiny whisper of a secret smile. In all of the world and beyond, there’s only one place he wants to be right now. “Let’s go back to bed.”

It’s a slow, staggering walk, but one they make together. Crowley sits naked on the edge of the mattress, silhouetted by lamplight, and allows the sensation of gooseflesh to prickle across the backs of his arms and the fine hair on his legs. He watches Aziraphale bustle about the neverending wardrobe, pulling out this and that but not finding himself satisfied until he withdraws a long nightshirt, the finely woven cotton so thin the definitive shape of his hand is visible through it. 

“This hasn’t seen much use since we were in Egypt, but I think it’ll do in a pinch,” he says, passing it over to Crowley. “Just to keep something light and cool on your skin.”

They work it over Crowley’s head and shoulders in a team effort, letting the fabric fall the rest of the way as gravity pulls it down to his hips. Aziraphale goes to fetch another pair of pyjamas for himself, dressing in them the human way after he makes careful work of removing his trousers and waistcoat and leaving each piece folded over the back of a nearby chair. 

When they’re both tucked into bed, comfortable and at ease despite the lamp still shining, Crowley turns his head and asks, quietly, “Aren’t you tired of lying about in here with me like an invalid?” 

“Far from it,” Aziraphale tells him, folding his hands in his lap where he’s propped up against his pillows. “It’s good to have a preoccupation other than my own thoughts, sometimes. And your presence is never a burden, wily or otherwise.” He smiles, demure and with some private pleasure. “I’ve grown rather fond of watching you sleep, in fact. You look so much more peaceful when you’re at ease, you know.” 

Crowley feels himself flush some at that, though he’s too tired to do more than blink. “You’ve been watching me sleep?” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale says, suddenly remembering that he ought to be self-conscious about admitting such a thing. “You—I mean, there’s little else to do but read and catalog, which I’m happy to indulge in at length, of course, but when you look so lovely, I suppose I find it hard to resist—” 

“God,” Crowley croaks, reaching over to get a handful of Aziraphale’s pyjama shirt with the fully realized intention to draw him in and never again let go. “We’re both so bloody gay.” 

Aziraphale laughs, and his smile is one pressed right there in a promise of good humor against Crowley’s mouth. “Goodness, I suppose we are,” he murmurs, and then takes Crowley’s face between his benevolent hands and truly, eagerly, miraculously kisses him. 

Their kissing and petting goes on for a spell, easygoing but with focused intent. Crowley moans when Aziraphale’s hands tangle in his hair, slipping one long leg beneath the covers until he can wedge his knee between the angel’s thighs. Despite his many aches and pains, he wants nothing more than for them to be closer, pressed flush together, two different shades of spectral color melded into one unending ray of light. 

It’s embarrassingly easy to remember the sensation of being held in that healing place, cradled and rocked in the essence of something so good and pure. Crowley’s eyes water at the mere thought, and he refuses to allow himself to shed any more tears, but he knows what he wants, now, with this shape of Aziraphale so soft and warm in his arms. The other form had healed him, more powerful in its raw divinity, but this one has healed him, too, in another way altogether. 

To Crowley, they are one in the same. 

“Get these off,” he hisses, pawing at the pyjama bottoms Aziraphale had only pulled on minutes before, feeling his sanity circle of the drain of desperation. “Need you to—oh, fucking hell, Zira, I _need—_ ”

“Shh, I’m right here,” Aziraphale murmurs, reaching to cup a firm, reassuring palm around the back of Crowley’s neck so they can simply lie there, foreheads pressed together, demon and angel, breathing the same air they’ve never needed but always indulged in. “I’m not going anywhere. Tell me what it is you need.” 

Despite every intention he had of doing so, Crowley can’t bring himself to say _Just fuck me already_. He tries, but his lips part and no words come out, like he’s fundamentally incapable of uttering that phrase for here, now, whatever exists within these four walls and what has come to have meaning between them. 

“I need you _inside_ me,” is what he says in the end, fists still curled in the front of Aziraphale’s pyjama top, silk-threaded buttons straining for dear life even though they’re already chest to chest. “Like this, angel,” Crowley whispers, feverish with the urgency of it. “Just like this.” 

“Darling,” Aziraphale sighs, reaching up to pass a thumb over the healing ridge of Crowley’s cheekbone, sweeping it back to the edge of his hairline. “All you ever had to do was ask.” 

The relief is disarming, in a way. Crowley’s grip loosens, and his eyelids droop, muscles gone slack where they were once straining. He nods, just to affirm what he meant, and can’t quite meet Aziraphale’s eyes, so he focuses on his soft mouth instead. 

“You won’t hurt me,” he chokes out, fingers splaying beneath the hem of Aziraphale’s shirt, seeking the warmth of smooth skin. He’s not sure if the reassurance is for him, the angel, or both of them together. 

“I wouldn’t even dream of it,” Aziraphale says, reaching beneath the sheet to skim his fingertips along the line of Crowley’s hip and thigh, drawing the thin nightshirt up over the demon’s skin as he goes. “You’re sure about this, Crowley? You’re still mending, after all—” 

Crowley touches a finger to Aziraphale’s lips, quieting him. “You,” he says. “You are what I want, angel. Nothing else. Right now—here. In this ugly tartan bed with your ridiculous bloody goosefeather pillows.”

Aziraphale’s brow furrows at that, lips working behind Crowley’s touch. “I thought you _liked_ my pillows,” he says. 

“I do,” Crowley rasps, blinking fast as he gets a better grip around his angel. “I fucking love them.” 

Aziraphale’s pyjamas are easy enough to get rid of, and Crowley doesn’t even bother with shrugging out of the soft cotton shift, merely lets Aziraphale draw it up to his chest and then take his leg in one hand, carefully hitching it over his own hip so he’s spread open like a well-loved book. 

It’s cumbersome, in a way, coupling like this, but then again easy and blissfully forgiving in its gentleness. There’s no obscene, hard slap of skin on skin, no grinding or knocking of the headboard against the wall. Aziraphale simply takes himself in hand, slips the head of his cock through some of the pearly slick already gathering there between Crowley’s legs, and slowly pushes up into the heat of him until there’s nowhere else to go but further into Crowley’s arms. 

For his own part, Crowley’s content to simply wrap himself around Aziraphale’s body, clinging to his front once they’re joined and he’s mesmerized by the full, perfect stretch of something so right inside him. He breathes out a shaken sound, fingers still grasping at the angel’s back, and buries his face somewhere against Aziraphale’s throat, fitting along the wonderful contour of him just so. 

Aziraphale’s hand is a warm weight at the small of Crowley’s back, another between his scarred shoulder blades where two dusky wings will one day sprout again, when their feathers have regrown and filled out anew. 

“Oh, my darling,” he whispers among a litany of sweet things, doing nothing for the moment, simply letting them exist in this profound sort of togetherness. A soothing hand travels up and down the ridge of Crowley’s spine, fingertips tracing runes and sigils of devotion and protection. 

“I wish I could live inside you,” Crowley croaks, a secret pressed somewhere against the shell of Aziraphale’s ear. “Safer, there. Better.” 

“I would let you,” Aziraphale tells him, canting his hips up just the barest bit, enough to draw a whisper of a gasp from between Crowley’s lips as he feels pleasure break open inside him. “I would hold you in my heart, if I could.”

Crowley does let out a wounded sound, then, like he’s been split open and hollowed out, but Aziraphale only holds him tight and doesn’t let go. After a time, when the world has gone dark and inky outside beyond the twinkling lampposts, he gathers Crowley up with agonizing tenderness and slowly shifts him onto his back in the soft bedding, never once breaking apart. 

“Stay with me,” Crowley whispers for the second time tonight, crossing his ankles at the small of Aziraphale’s back, looping his mended arms around the angel’s neck and breathing in the smell and sight of him, close enough to leave an imprint upon him, a thumb pressed against clear glass. “Please.” 

Aziraphale kisses the healing places on Crowley’s face, the tip of his nose and the damp corner of one golden serpent’s eye. His answer is spelled out in his fingers linked through with Crowley’s, the gentle rhythm of his hips as he rocks them both toward some distant bliss, slow and steady, like the ceaseless tattoo of the warm sea lapping upon its beloved shore.

* * * * *

When Crowley next wakes, the dwindling lack of pain is almost dizzying.

He’s tucked under Aziraphale’s chin, both of them wrapped around each other in the middle of the wide bed. The window shows a world outside that is still dark, but the clock readout at the bedside tells him it’s nearly four in the morning. It’ll be a while, yet, before the rest of England begins to stir and welcome in the new day.

Crowley remembers, belatedly and somewhat abruptly, that he hasn’t checked on his car in over a week. It’s been double-parked downstairs on the street this whole time, probably papered over with yellow and pink citations by now. He grumbles at the thought, reaching up to irritably wipe some of the sleep from his eyes.

“Bentley’s probably wondering if I’m even alive,” Crowley says, because he knows Aziraphale’s been awake this whole time. “Guess I ought to go down and have a visit, today.”

“Mmm,” Aziraphale hums in agreement against the top of Crowley’s head. “Color me curious, dear, about why you drove here and insisted you were still in Mayfair.”

Crowley stiffens. “I didn’t,” he admits, swallowing hard. “Drive here, I mean. The car did.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale says, one simple syllable that hangs in the air. Crowley can feel it when the angel smiles, wide enough that it reaches the corners of his eyes. “What a clever machine, that car of yours.”

“More like a real smart arse, if you ask me,” Crowley scoffs, and then, after a long moment of thought, goes so still he doesn’t even seem to be breathing.

Aziraphale blinks, gently touching the joint at Crowley’s mending elbow before skimming his fingers upward, over his bicep and along the new pink skin on his shoulder, almost in the shape of a star. “What’s wrong, darling?”

Crowley mumbles something into Aziraphale’s chest, so low it’s practically inaudible. 

“Come again?” Aziraphale asks, straining to hear, and this time the demon’s voice touches, very hesitantly, upon the still bedroom air.

“I _said_ ,” Crowley groans, “‘bring us home,’ and the blessed car brought me to you.”

The room brightens, then, despite the lack of daylight outside, and if Crowley looked up he might swear he saw the edge of a golden halo flash in the corner of his eye, but he couldn’t be sure, and even if he were, he wouldn’t have been remotely surprised. 

Aziraphale laughs, warm and melodic like a chorus of bells, the sweet sound of it carrying well into the next century. Kilometers away, flower buds unfurl into bloom, newborn animals stand on wobbly legs for the very first time, and humans sit up in bed with their hearts pounding, full of something that feels like the intoxicating headrush of a soul-deep love they’ve waited far too long to realize or remember. 

“And so it was,” the angel says at last, holding Crowley so dearly in his arms, “against all odds, right where you needed to be.”

“Eh,” Crowley says, somehow shrugging without hardly moving a muscle. He’s glad his face is hidden as not to betray his tiny smile. “Something like that.”

The surplus of light within the room gradually fades, tucked back away for safekeeping once more. Aziraphale only smiles himself, and says, “So long as this bookshop stands, dear boy, you’re more than welcome to call it home.”

Crowley nods, swallowing against the burning ache of something he can’t yet say in the back of his throat. But it’s there, brimming beneath the surface, a truth within him that couldn’t be stomped out no matter how hard anybody may try. 

It’s not the bookshop that he calls home, exactly, but that’s close enough to the truth. Close enough for now. Closer than he’d ever really allowed himself to consider, before.

“You can stay as long as you’d like,” Aziraphale adds, reverently combing his fingers back through Crowley’s hair, punctuating his words with a press of his lips that feel like a blessing. “For however long you should need.”

Maybe it’s the easy way out, but he’s still healing, after all. So stay is exactly what Crowley does.

**Author's Note:**

> I wish I had something more substantial to offer for these two, but lately it's just enjoyable to write for the sheer sake of writing, I guess. Like small exercises to stretch the muscles after a long hibernation :) I'm always keen on making more buddies in this fandom, so if you're on twitter my handle there is @honkforhankcon


End file.
